It's the Brian Laris Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone.

For this summer Friday, we've put together some recent conversations, edited just a bit for clarity and time, including Henry Lewis Gates

on his latest book that looks at the role of literature in defining blackness.

Judith Butler, re-examining gender, 34 years after the release of her classic book,

Gender Trouble, Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Plus, praise for appliances that actually last, but we start

with this conversation from May. You know how we like to talk about history on the show and

related to the present? Well, we have a special guest who will take us on a 500-year ride through

major social changes, he calls them revolutions, that have

led us to the America of today. This will begin in the Netherlands, in the 1600s, believe it or

not, and it will end with our social media habits, our relationship to our identities,

even the possible end to the left versus right model that has so defined

our politics and how we think about our politics for generations.

Who can lead a 500-year history tour in one book and try to convey the arc of all that

social change in one radio segment?

It's Farid Zakaria, the Washington Post Foreign Affairs columnist and host of GPS,

the Sunday Global Affairs Show on CNN. His new book is called Age of Revolutions, Progress and

Backlash from 1600 to the Present. We'll do this in two parts to follow the framing of the book, three

revolutions from the past that helped set up today's world, and then four revolutions that

Farid sees us in the middle of today, each one in brief, obviously, to make it work on a radio

show timeline. Let's see if we can do it.

Farid, always good to have you on the show. Welcome back to WNYC.

It's a pleasure to be with you, Brian. I'm glad to be here.

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